By Curmudgeon
The Standard-Examiner is packed this morning with interesting articles, editorials and letters, well worth perusing.
First, on the front page, Mr. Schwebke has a story on the City Council's continuing attempts to find out who paid for the gondola financial analysis that was the subject of yesterday's editorial in the SE. Here are the opening graphs of the story:
OGDEN — The Ogden City Council is questioning whether Ogden’s administration funded a recently released fiscal impact study for a controversial gondola project.Curiouser and curiouser.
The council asked the administration in a letter Thursday to explain a Dec. 22 expenditure of $16,250 to Lewis, Young, Robertson & Burningham Inc., a Salt Lake City firm that completed the study.
The expenditure was later canceled.
The funds were to come from the city’s Crossroads of the West Historical District account, said City Council Executive Director Bill Cook.
The council also has asked the administration to detail two other financial postings of $16,250, dated March 9, for payments to Lewis, Young, Robertson & Burningham Inc. The council wants to determine whether those payments were actually made, Cook said.
Next, there is the SE's lead editorial on the opening of The Junction. It is a curious, and slightly schizophrenic piece. It opens this way:
"Some people are calling it a "risk," but as we look at The Junction development taking shape in downtown Ogden, it already looks like a victory to us."
And a bit further on, it berates those who opposed the Junction project from its inception:
"For many city residents, this day was hard to fathom. They predicted certain ruin and financial catastrophe. We know, because we still bear the lash marks: Years ago in this space, when the Standard-Examiner's editorial board encouraged the city to purchase the failed mall, demolish it and create something new in its place, lots of our readers responded angrily."
The editorial goes on to concede that:
"It's true, as we recognized at the outset, that this experiment in redevelopment has been expensive; the city has had to spread a lot of money around in the form of incentives. It's taken a share of profits from the Business Depot Ogden and more than a little debt to make this happen. Now, we hope, the momentum will be sufficient to begin making more happen -- along the east side of Washington Boulevard, north of Temple Square, etc. -- without the city having to prime the pump with taxpayer funds; we'll know soon enough."
OK, let me make sure I have this straight: According to the SE, the Junction is a victory, a success! [Hasn't opened yet, of course, but it's a success!] But the same editorial concedes only "hope" that the city will not have to "prime the pump with taxpayer funds" any further to cover the debt it has incurred already to fund the Junction's construction. Adding, fingers crossed, "we'll know soon enough."
Note to SE Editorial Board: If we are still "hoping" the Junction will be financially successful enough that taxpayers will not have to pour millions more into it, then your boosterism claim at the head of the editorial that it already looks like a winner seems a little out of place. I hope it does succeed. Very much. I hope it is successful beyond the wildest dreams of the Mayor and Council that invested city money in it. But we won't know that for a while. A little patience, please, before announcing victories. Let's let the evidence come in first.
Finally, there is a letter to the editor by John Arrington, Ogden's finance manager. He disputes the claim by some that Ogden's bonded indebtedness is $93 million instead of the approximately $20 the mayor claims. Mr. Arrington explains that "The Redevelopment Agency does have its own debt that is secured by new revenue generated by separate RDA projects. There is no city obligation for those debts, with two exceptions in which city assets were pledged in order to obtain significantly lower rates."
His argument would have been more convincing had he indicated how much Ogden city indebtedness the "two exceptions" involved, but, alas, he did not. [What is it with this administration about full disclosure? Why do they find it so hard?]
